For years, Apple has poured billions into its Vision Pro mixed-reality headset, a device that dazzled technologists but struggled to find mainstream traction at $3,499. Now, mounting evidence suggests the company is pivoting toward a far more consumer-friendly form factor: lightweight smart glasses that could arrive as early as 2027. The move would pit Apple directly against Meta, which has already established a beachhead in the category with its Ray-Ban Meta glasses, and could redefine how millions of people interact with artificial intelligence throughout their day.
The latest wave of reporting, compiled by 9to5Mac, paints a picture of a project that has moved well beyond the conceptual stage. According to multiple analysts and supply-chain sources, Apple’s smart glasses effort—internally progressing under tight secrecy—is shaping up to be one of the most ambitious product launches the company has attempted since the Apple Watch debuted in 2015. The glasses are expected to integrate Apple Intelligence, the company’s on-device AI framework, and could serve as the primary interface for Siri’s next generation of capabilities.
What the Supply Chain Is Telling Us
Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, who has a strong track record on Apple hardware predictions, has indicated that Apple is working with multiple lens and display component suppliers in Asia to develop a glasses-style wearable that prioritizes all-day comfort over immersive visual fidelity. Unlike the Vision Pro, which uses high-resolution micro-OLED displays for full mixed-reality experiences, the smart glasses are expected to feature a simpler heads-up display—potentially a small projection system that overlays notifications, directions, and AI-generated responses onto the wearer’s field of view.
Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, who has been the most consistent source of Apple product intelligence over the past decade, has reported that Apple sees smart glasses as a critical part of its long-term AI strategy. In his Power On newsletter, Gurman has noted that the company views a lightweight, always-available wearable as the ideal delivery mechanism for Apple Intelligence features that currently live on the iPhone. The logic is straightforward: if AI is most useful when it has constant context about your surroundings, then a device worn on your face—with a camera, microphone, and sensors—becomes the optimal hardware platform.
The Meta Factor: A Race Already Underway
Apple would not be entering an empty market. Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses, developed in partnership with EssilorLuxottica, have become a surprise commercial hit. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said the glasses exceeded internal sales expectations, and the company is already working on a next-generation version with a built-in display. The current model relies on audio output and a camera for its AI features—users can ask Meta AI to identify objects, translate text, or answer questions about what they’re seeing—but the addition of a visual display would bring Meta’s product much closer to what Apple is reportedly developing.
The competitive dynamics here are significant. Meta has a multi-year head start in building consumer comfort with the idea of AI-enabled glasses. It also has a pricing advantage: the Ray-Ban Meta glasses retail for around $299, a fraction of what Apple typically charges for new product categories. Apple’s challenge will be to offer a sufficiently superior experience—in design, AI capability, and privacy protections—to justify a premium price. Industry observers expect Apple’s glasses to launch in the $800 to $1,500 range, though no official pricing has been disclosed.
Apple Intelligence as the Core Selling Point
What makes the Apple glasses project particularly interesting to industry watchers is how tightly it appears to be linked to the company’s AI ambitions. Since introducing Apple Intelligence at WWDC 2024, Apple has been steadily expanding the framework’s capabilities across iPhone, iPad, and Mac. But executives have reportedly expressed frustration that the iPhone—a device that spends most of its time in a pocket or on a table—is a suboptimal platform for contextual AI features that benefit from real-time environmental awareness.
Smart glasses solve that problem. A device perched on the user’s nose can continuously process visual and auditory information, enabling AI features that are impossible on a phone. Imagine walking through a foreign city and having translations appear in your peripheral vision, or attending a conference where the glasses quietly surface the LinkedIn profile of the person you’re speaking with. These are the kinds of use cases that Apple’s teams are reportedly prototyping, according to sources cited by 9to5Mac. The on-device processing capabilities of Apple’s custom silicon—likely a variant of the M-series or a new chip designed specifically for wearables—would allow many of these features to function without a constant internet connection, a key differentiator in Apple’s privacy-first approach.
Design Philosophy: Fashion Over Function Overload
One of the most persistent themes in the reporting is Apple’s insistence that the glasses look and feel like normal eyewear. The Vision Pro, for all its technical brilliance, is an isolating device—a ski-goggle-sized headset that cuts the wearer off from the people around them. Apple’s leadership, including CEO Tim Cook, has reportedly internalized the lesson that social acceptability is the single biggest barrier to adoption of face-worn technology. Google learned this painfully with Google Glass a decade ago, when the device became a cultural punchline and a symbol of tech-industry overreach.
To avoid that fate, Apple has reportedly been working with luxury eyewear designers and materials scientists to create frames that are indistinguishable from high-end prescription glasses at a casual glance. The battery, one of the most difficult engineering challenges in a glasses form factor, may be partially housed in the temples of the frames, with additional power available through a small external battery pack connected via a thin cable—a design approach similar to what Apple used with the Vision Pro’s external battery.
The Privacy Tightrope
Any camera-equipped wearable raises immediate privacy concerns, and Apple is acutely aware of the scrutiny it will face. Meta has already dealt with backlash over the Ray-Ban glasses’ camera, and Apple—which has built much of its brand identity around user privacy—will need to be even more careful. Reports suggest that Apple’s glasses will include a prominent LED indicator that illuminates whenever the camera is active, similar to Meta’s approach but potentially more conspicuous. The company is also expected to emphasize on-device processing, meaning that images and audio captured by the glasses would be analyzed locally rather than sent to Apple’s servers.
Still, the tension between powerful AI features and privacy expectations will be one of the defining challenges of the product. Apple will need to convince both consumers and regulators that a device capable of identifying faces, reading text, and interpreting surroundings can be trusted not to become a surveillance tool. The company’s track record on privacy gives it credibility here, but the stakes are higher when the sensor array is literally pointed at other people throughout the day.
What This Means for Apple’s Hardware Roadmap
The smart glasses project also raises questions about the future of the Vision Pro. Apple has not abandoned its mixed-reality headset—a lower-cost version is reportedly still in development—but the glasses represent a fundamentally different bet on where spatial computing is headed. The Vision Pro is a productivity and entertainment device; the glasses are an ambient computing platform. Both may coexist in Apple’s product lineup, much as the iPad and MacBook serve overlapping but distinct purposes, but the glasses have far greater potential to become a mass-market product.
Wall Street appears to be paying attention. Apple shares have remained resilient in 2026 even as questions about iPhone growth persist, and several analysts have pointed to the wearables category as a key driver of future revenue. Morgan Stanley’s Erik Woodring wrote in a recent note that Apple’s AI wearables strategy could add $15 billion to $20 billion in annual revenue by 2030 if the company captures even a modest share of the addressable market. That projection assumes Apple can ship millions of units per year—a high bar, but not unreasonable given the company’s manufacturing scale and brand loyalty.
The Broader Industry Implications
If Apple enters the smart glasses market with a credible product, the ripple effects will extend far beyond Cupertino. Google is reportedly reviving its own smart glasses efforts, and Samsung has signaled interest in the category through its partnership with Qualcomm. Snap, which has been building AR glasses for years through its Spectacles line, could find itself squeezed between Apple and Meta in a market it helped pioneer. Component suppliers—particularly those making micro-displays, waveguides, and compact camera modules—stand to benefit enormously from what could become a multi-company arms race.
For consumers, the most important question is whether Apple can deliver a product that people actually want to wear every day. The technology is promising, the AI capabilities are advancing rapidly, and the competitive pressure from Meta ensures that Apple cannot afford to be complacent. But history is littered with wearable devices that were technically impressive and commercially irrelevant. Apple’s genius has always been in making complex technology feel intuitive and desirable. If it can do that with a pair of glasses, the implications for the tech industry—and for daily life—will be profound.
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